The Influence of Globalization on Serbia's Social Development

The good face of the god Janus shows that globalization accelerates economic and civilization development of all the countries in the world, including the underdeveloped ones. It enables them to integrate into more powerful and complex systems, to take over the most economically efficient innovations through their mutual relations, in order to appear on the global market and improve their potentials. With this orientation, they can develop their culture and economy, increase their GDP and progress faster. For the entire world, globalization means scientific, industrial and IT revolution, common standards and shared rules of living. They have proved to be good for all the peoples in the world, but

their more intense utilization was hampered by existing cultural and civilization differences. In the past two decades, the number of people living below the poverty line has been halved, the diet of many poor peoples has improved significantly, the wages they receive are still meager, but have increased considerably relative to those they used to have. The ideas of liberal democracy proliferate around the world, while authoritarian systems of governance slowly vanish. Multiparty systems are being introduced worldwide, while the greatest number of people has received the franchise without any discrimination regarding their sex, race, ethnic or religious groups. Many states are gradually introducing parliamentarianism and allowing for critical public opinion. Mortality rate, especially infant mortality rate, has declined with application of modern drugs, which have also eradicated many diseases. Education has reached unforeseen proportions; persons in completely backward regions today read books, newspapers, listen to the radio, use phones, electricity, watch TV and live in better housing, drinking quality water. They can be accessed by new roads, railways, airplanes, many people today drive cars, dress better,
		Leon Bakst, Costume fort dancer Ida Rubinstein, 1912.

use modern technical appliances and change their archaic habits in contact with the civilized world. The progress has been most intense in the developed countries and the gap between the rich and the poor nations has even widened. Because of the combative attitude of Serbian authorities, positive values of globalization have only slightly enriched the Serbian state and the people. By the value of its exports, Serbia stands behind all European states. It is today listed among underdeveloped countries and the likes of New Guinea, Papua, Sudan, Gabon or Myanmar. By internet usage, Serbia is at the level of Guyana, Kazakhstan or Libya. Of some 800,000 highly educated intellectuals, around 400,000 had left Serbia and today create new values or enhance the skills they have in many developed states. Negative selection prevents the intellectuals that have stayed to actively participate in Serbia's development, which decreases considerably its development potentials.
The other face of god Janus shows that globalization has many repercussions that affect poor nations, but also, increasingly, the developed countries in the world. The world today is an open system, without efficient control on the global level. In these conditions, the great powers strive to take the role of main controllers of the global development. Furthermore, the ever-more developing mass ideological, nationalist and religious movements with aggressive orientation pose a threat to the entire world. They thrive in many underdeveloped countries and cannot be subjected to any effective regulation; the ideas that they carry engender local wars and terrorism. A special danger comes from the spread of drug abuse and collective destruction at sporting events and public gatherings, and the danger rises rapidly when these are orchestrated by disruptive ideologies and powers. A big threat for the poor nations comes from uncontrolled monopolist behavior of large multinational companies. With their privileged positions, they tend to jeopardize development of economy and trade on both local and global level. This situation hurts mostly underdeveloped states, but consequently also large banking systems that provide finance for their development.
The globalized and not legally regulated trade leads to collapse of small national

economies and, indirectly, to undoing of large global companies. The problem was not mitigated by formation of IMF and GAT, because they only work to remove barriers to trade. World Trade Organization was charged with the task to solve trade disputes, but it cannot serve to abolish all methods of protectionism. Globalization directs resource allocation toward stable states, which yield the highest possible gain on the capital - which is why countries laden with internal conflicts lack the basic assumptions for progress. They become isolated and deteriorate, while the aid they receive is merely symbolical. At the end of the 19th, and especially in the 20th century, the cornerstone of liberal democracy and capitalist economy was correlated with the laissez-faire principle, which meant that the state should abstain from meddling into the economy. This
		Leon Bakst, Elisum, 1906.

principle changes today, because the systems are in danger and require government intervention.
Uncontrolled development of the process of globalization may jeopardize lives of hundreds of millions people, particularly in the poor countries. Globalization entails growing demands of the "awakened people" from the underdeveloped states, who demand the right to work and have a better life. They uncontrollably migrate to the big cities, where they fail to find jobs that would pay for a better living. Due to their overall vulnerability, they resort to vices, crime in particular. Mass use of drugs has become one of the biggest problems in the world, and it especially affects younger population. The existential problems engender apathy, pessimism, depression, unwillingness to act and a sick dependency. Burdened with their failure and aware that the chances they could change anything are slight, they become scared, alienated and depressed; that is why they seek quick pleasures, affirmation without effective action and validation through immoral acts. Because the authorities fail to show flexibility, ordinary people in Serbia, particularly the young, are hit by negative implications of globalization, without any quality solution offered for their existential problems. The accelerated globalization process has created a new world, which is not the same as the world we used to know and which calls for new radical solutions.